Archive

Blog Archive: 2016

The FXPAL robotics research group has recently explored technologies for improving the usability of mobile telepresence robots. We evaluated a prototype head-tracked stereoscopic (HTS) teleoperation interface for a remote collaboration task. The results of this study indicate that using a HTS systems reduces task errors and improves the perceived collaboration success and
viewing experience.

We also developed a new focus plus context viewing technique for mobile robot teleoperation. This allows us to use wide-angle camera images
that proved rich contextual visual awareness of the robot’s surroundings while at the same time preserving a distortion-free region
in the middle of the camera view.

To this, we added a semi-automatic robot control method that allows operators to navigate the telepresence robot via a pointing and clicking directly on
the camera image feed. This through-the-screen interaction paradigm has the advantage of decoupling operators from the robot control loop, freeing them for
other tasks besides driving the robot.

Teleconferencing is now a nearly ubiquitous aspect of modern work. We routinely use apps such as Google Hangouts or Skype to present work or discuss documents with remote colleagues. Unfortunately, sharing source documents is not always as seamless. For example, a meeting participant might share content via screencast that she has access to, but that the remote participant does not. Remote participants may also not have the right software to open the source document, or the content shared might be only a small section of a large document that is difficult to share.

Later this week in Vienna, we will present our work at DocEng on DocuGram, a tool we developed at FXPAL to help address these issues. DocuGram can capture and analyze shared screen content to automatically reconstitute documents. Furthermore, it can capture and integrate annotations and voice notes made as the content is shared.

The first video below describes DocuGram, and the second shows how we have integrated it into our teleconferencing tool, MixMeet. Check it out, and be sure to catch our talk on Friday, September 16th at 10:00AM.

Early next week, Ville Mäkelä and Jennifer Marlow will present our work at Mobile HCI on tools we developed at FXPAL to support distributed workers. The paper, “Bringing mobile into meetings: Enhancing distributed meeting participation on smartwatches and mobile phones”, presents the design, development, and evaluation of two applications, MixMeetWear and MeetingMate, that aim to help users in non-standard contexts participate in meetings.

The videos below show the basic functionality of the two systems. If you are in Florence for Mobile HCI, please stop by their presentation on Thursday, September 8, in the 2:00-3:30 session (in Sala Verde) to get the full story.